Android Creator's Startup Essential Products Cuts About 30% of Staff - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-17/andy-rubin-s-startup-essential-products-cuts-about-30-of-staff <comment><USER2> I'm super interested in the rumors that Essential is working on "an anti- smartphone with a small screen that relies primarily on voice commands."[1] The world needs more sub-5" phones now that Sony isn't making the Compact phones, and Apple isn't making a successor to the iPhone SE.

1\. [https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/10/10/essential-ai- phone-...](https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/10/10/essential-ai-phone-that- operates-mainly-through-voice-commands/)

<comment><USER3> Palm has been resurrected as a brand for tiny phones:

[https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/10/palm-rises-from- the-...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/10/palm-rises-from-the-dead-as- a-zombie-brand-launches-tiny-smartphone/)

<comment><USER4> Which is cool until you find out that it's $350.

<comment><USER5> Can you explain what you mean? Are you saying you think the size of the display is a primary cost center for phones, so small screen phones would have a substantially cheaper bill of materials?

<comment><USER4> > _Are you saying you think the size of the display is a primary cost center > for phones, so small screen phones would have a substantially cheaper bill > of materials?_

Not exactly. The way this phone is being marketed is very strange - this phone is designed as an "add-on phone", it can only be used as an add-on to an existing line.

As a standalone phone $350 isn't too bad, but asking people to pay $350 in addition to whatever they want to pay for their "main" phone is a little much.

They're in Apple Watch territory with this pricing and I don't think they have the ecosystem to demand that kind of price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm a bit sad to see this, but it wasn't hard to predict.

Essential launched its PH1, which was design-wise ahead of the curve. But, they didn't really seem to listen to or predict the market.

First, there was no headphone jack. That's controversial, but you've probably lost what I'd guess at least 10% of your potential market by doing so(potentially as high as 40%).

Second, the camera at launch was not good. That's probably what is most important to most people. I've heard it's gotten better, but a bit late.

Last, and most importantly, it was absolutely overpriced. It brought nothing to the table to warrant its price, and probably should have been sub $500 at launch.

Each of these points can be nitpicked by saying "well Samsung/Apple/LG/Oneplus did it", but Essential is not that. They are an unknown startup company with no consumer trust. You cannot expect people to give up features and pay Samsung prices before they know who you are.

/rant

<comment><USER7> How was it design-wise ahead of the curve? All I see is yet another flat rectangle. With a notch. Ugh.

It's a shame that no one really tries to innovate on mobile device design any more in order to target niche markets. But perhaps the economics of mass production mean that's no longer a viable strategy.

<comment><USER8> > With a notch

I believe it was one of (if not) the first with a notch.

<comment><USER9> The notch isn't really a design feature though... assuming you're being sarcastic.

<comment><USER10> One man's notch is another's "edge to edge display". The cutout allows a higher display to body ratio, which some people value.

<comment><USER9> In other words, an unfortunate trade-off which exists due to a technical limitation. No one _wants_ a notch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Still can't figure out what space they are looking to occupy.

The Pixel phones have staked out the expensive-but-good market for "pure" Android snobs.

Samsung has staked out the best-hardware-early market with deep ties to cell providers.

OnePlus has staked out the cheaper-but-surprisingly-good market previously held by the Nexus line.

Where does Essential fit? Rubin never answered this question. Outside of a few tech people, no one knows Essential exists...even OnePlus runs ads.

I suspect Rubin thought he could just build some brand buzz and flip the whole company?

<comment><USER12> The Essential phone handily beats OnePlus at $500 or $450. It was priced at $750 I believe on launch and failed completely there.

Essential also seemingly spent a lot of time, money, and internal phone volume on their add on feature. A complete waste as anybody with an ounce of sense could have told you. Drop that work, add in an audio jack or a second USBC port, sell at $500 and they would have done reasonably well for a first product.

<comment><USER13> I'd get the OnePlus even at that price range; it may not be as nice looking, but it's at least sort of repairable. If you break your essential they make you buy a new one at a slight discount. ifixit gave the essential a 1/10 for repair ability.

<comment><USER12> Completely agree that the lack of easy repair is a valid criticism of the Essential phone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> /r/titlegore

Took me a while to decypher that it meant "Android creator's startup Essential Products cuts about 30% of staff"

<comment><USER15> It's so easy to fix:

Android Creator's Startup, Essential Products, Cuts About 30% of Staff

<comment><USER16> Essential Products, founded by Android creator, cuts about 30% of staff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The differentiator is not clear enough. If you're up against massive entities who can produce on the cheap, the value prop in consumerland has to be obvious and poignant, i.e. it should be easy to create a narrative that 'this phone is the best for X' and a lot of people want X. It can be aspirational or functional or both or whatever but it has to pop.

<comment><USER18> Or maybe their phone sucked. Which, apparently, it did. Especially the camera.

<comment><USER19> Not familiar with any issues besides the camera.

<comment><USER13> It's also completely impossible to repair and the screen cracks if you breath on it wrong (contrary to all their claims about toughness they advertised so heavily when they came out with it). By impossible to repair, I mean quite literally no one including them will repair it, if something goes wrong they will send you a new one at a slight discount, but given how expensive it is that's not much comfort since you can still buy another brand of phone cheaper (I think it was $200 off, which is a bit better now that they've dropped the price, but still insane for a "repair"). It's a serious waste of money. Looks nice though. EDIT: I say it looks nice, but the polished back was a stupid idea; everyone complains about their phone being covered in fingerprints, so if you do mirrored metal guess what happens… it's the worst phone I've ever had for looking dirty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Why don't we have xiaomi in the US. One plus has crept their price up. I think if we have a company that can go make a pocofone would do well here. If you can get 90% of flagship features for less than 1/2 of the price I think you could do well in the US.

<comment><USER21> They would have to get a lot of patent deals in place and pay a lot of royalties, so the price point would likely be significantly higher.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't understand why Essential suicided itself by immediately putting itself up for sale. Such a lost opportunity

<comment><USER23> Remember that Android, Inc was purchased by Google in less than 2 years after being founded, and before it even launched a product.

<comment><USER22> what are you getting at? he's not The Messiah?

<comment><USER23> That his previous success came via a quick exit/acquihire, which is what's he's trying to do again.

<comment><USER24> Google should buy this company, add a jack and wireless charging, sell it for $400 and declare victory.

<comment><USER25> Why would they sabotage the Pixel's pricing strategy like that?

<comment><USER24> I think it's basically as good as a pixel. Is there anything that comes from the pointless "neural network" chip in it? Nothing that I can see, but it's possible there's something new that I don't know about.

Really, just add a jack to it and declare victory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Sad to see. It seems there really isn't a market for these types of Android phones.

<comment><USER19> A classy phone not from a giant tech company or with questionable governmental ties? No forced bloatware? Fast, reliable updates?

There's really no market for that? The market is stupid and wrong.

This isn't a failure of technology. This is a failure of marketing and getting the message out.

<comment><USER27> The market is there, of course! It just appears to be narrower that what's required to sustain a company like this, at least at the price point they chose.

I can imagine such a phone as a no-compromises ultra-premium product for the select few who want utter privacy and safety, and would pay at e.g. the iPhone's price point for a comparable level of assurance.

I can imagine such a phone at a low-end, cheaper segment for the privacy- conscious but not very well-off who could tolerate a number of compromises in features.

At a mass-market segment it, unfortunately, did not seem to work too well, though.

<comment><USER28> It was overpriced. They sold what? 50k phones at about $500 a pop average before cutting the price to $350? That's $25m in revenue after raising $300m. They should have continued working on a line of phones. Instead they switched gears, dropped the price on a phone and started doing a fire sale.

<comment><USER29> It's kind of bizarre planning to bet the whole company one one product whose go-to-market strategy wasn't clear.

<comment><USER28> If you decide you are going to be a smartphone company, after you do sufficiently well on your first phone you do not go and decide to go into the market of connected home.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to Convince Customers to Switch from One-Time Fee to Subscription - <AUTHOR> How would you convince customers from an industry who are used to paying one-time fee for a product to move to a subscription based model? What would be your compelling argument(s)? What approach would you use to nudge them towards a subscription model? <comment><USER2> Do what Jira does - your license is good for support and releases out to one year (or whatever) from renewal, but the core software and the entire ecosystem built around it is constantly moving. Nothing stops working if you don't renew your licensing, but the world moves on without you.

Why should your customers subscribe if the current one-time fee gets them everything they need? that's just poor business. But if it brings value, and the cost is reasonable, they'll happily keep renewing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Consider adding a new tier of value. As a customer, suddenly having to pay more (forever) for something will feel like a bitter prospect, unless it is positioned as something better I am opting into. I don't know what your product is or your target market (can you share more details?), but consider adding "Pro" features, or a service tier that adds warranty or enterprise support.

(I have no personal experience with this except as a customer of things that have subscription vs free tiers.)

Patrick McKenzie (known here as 'patio11) has blogged extensively about SAAS- related things, including pricing [0], [1]. If you haven't read his stuff, you may find them helpful.

0: [https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/08/13/doubling-saas- revenue/](https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/08/13/doubling-saas-revenue/) 1: [https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/09/21/ramit-sethi-and- patrick...](https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/09/21/ramit-sethi-and-patrick- mckenzie-on-why-your-customers-would-be-happier-if-you-charged-more/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Some reasons you can use:

1\. Better alignment of incentives. Since your company now needs them to keep renewing a subscription on some regular basis, there's even more of an impetus for you to deliver great value to them.

2\. Paying in inflated future dollars, which are less valuable than today's dollars. (This is assuming you let them "lock in" today's price by signing up for a lengthier subscription. Whether or not you require some degree of pre- payment here is a knob you can tune. See #5 below)

3\. More predictable costs for the customer

4\. May allow customer to move something from being a capex to an opex, which can be advantageous in some circumstances (getting approvals for capital expenditures is often lengthy, difficult, etc.)

5\. You can create a lot of flexibility by fiddling with the length of the subscriptions, discounts for pre-payment, different rebate strategies for early cancellation (in the case of pre-payment), etc. So in theory you should be able to compose a model that will be palatable to most customers.

I'm sure there are many more, but those are the top ones that come to my mind.

<comment><USER5> > 1\. Better alignment of incentives. Since your company now needs them to > keep renewing a subscription on some regular basis, there's even more of an > impetus for you to deliver great value to them.

Is this accurate?

I actually see it as the reverse. Before, software creators had to improve new versions enough that upgrading was worth the cost. Now that I'm forced to keep paying regardless, the software creator is no longer incentivized to actually improve their product.

I think it's notable that Photoshop CC in 2019 isn't all that different from Photoshop CS6 from 2012, at least relative to CS5 etc before it.

<comment><USER4> Hmmm... I don't use Photoshop for anything, so I can't speak to that specific aspect. I'm approaching this from the point of view of enterprise software / SaaS services, and not desktop productivity software. It may be that the dynamics are different in the latter realm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just do what AutoDesk, Adobe, and Microsoft have done - cost the subscription model so that it doesn't make sense to purchase a one-time license.

</comment><comment><USER7> Value added in the subscription model. If it's just the same product, then I'm not going to switch.</comment>


Tomtown - <AUTHOR> http://interconnected.org/home/2015/10/08/tomtown <comment><USER2> Everything was better in the past even the future. That said I used services like MySpace or LastFM more than I use Facebook(which I don't use) or Spotify(which don't use), so I somehow understand where he is coming from, but not where he is heading, one single platform for everthing?More diversity? I don't quite get it</comment>


Code Fellows: Ruby on Rails Bootcamp Review - <AUTHOR> http://www.billyshih.com/blog/code-fellows-review-month-1/

<comment><USER2> Great write up Billy. Have you had a chance to talk to the founders or employees at the TechStars companies?

</comment><comment><USER3> I've applied several times, can't wait to be accepted.

</comment><comment><USER4> Couldn't have said it better myself</comment>


Ruby's Date/DateTime classes rewritten in C.. 20-200x perf improvement - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/jeremyevans/home_run Fast Date/DateTime classes for ruby. By just installing the home_run gem/lib you'll get an amazing performance increase! <comment><USER2> Too often these types of optimisation ignore the actual real world usage but credit to the author for showing that it can seriously improve ActiveRecord performance (albeit 3-4x speedup rather than 200x). I have some Date-intensive models so I might consider using this.

</comment><comment> j-g-faustus I got something like a 10x performance improvement (for custom code parsing stock quotes from CSV) merely by rewriting Ruby's Date class in Ruby. The default Ruby Date implementation is awfully slow.

<comment><USER3> Any idea on what edge cases you might be missing out on that would make your version X times faster? Or, why their version is so slow?

<comment><USER4> Date.parse is really incredibly slow, because it tries all the format parsers until it get one that works. If the format you're trying to parse is low in that list, its going to be very slow.

If you know your format (iso8601, etc), you're better off just using the right parser instead of Date.parse.

Also the internal representation uses Rational, which can be pretty slow itself.

Date.parse: [http://github.com/ruby/ruby/blob/trunk/lib/date/format.rb#L1...](http://github.com/ruby/ruby/blob/trunk/lib/date/format.rb#L1028)

edit: correction to how parse works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been using Ryan Tomayko's date/performance library, which is pretty fast, especially if you use it along with his date/memoize module.

<http://github.com/rtomayko/date-performance>

</comment><comment><USER6> Despite the problems with the Date classes, I still think this is ultimately the wrong approach.

Dropping to C at the slightest hint of a performance issue is a band-aid, papering over deficiencies in the VM.

</comment><comment><USER7> I hope this becomes a default at least for 1.8. The performance improvement is less dramatic in Ruby 1.9

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't get it. Isn't one of the major purposes of using higher level languages to avoid writing in C?

<comment><USER9> "one of the major purposes of using higher level languages [is] to avoid writing in C"

And one of the major purposes of using C is to write fast libraries that can then be called from high level languages.

<comment><USER10> Alternately, if you use a high-level-language like Haskell that can compile into machine code, you can rewrite something like regexp matching (like regex- tdfa[1]) and get better performance than what the stdlib gives you on some inputs.

[1] [http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Regular_expressions#regex...](http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Regular_expressions#regex- tdfa)

<comment><USER11> Yeah, exactly. I rarely have to call out to C in my Haskell applications. When I do, it's only to get or send data to a C library that I don't want to rewrite.

Internally, things like Data.Vector work just like the C equivalent. The internal representation of the data is the same (i.e., Vector.Unboxed Double == a big block of memory with CDoubles in it), and the machine instructions that run on the data are the same.

High-level languages need not be slow. It's just that Perl, Python, Ruby, and PHP are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Which is excellent if your primary use case is dealing with millions of date operations.</comment>


TweetFire - new Twitter client for iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://app.net/tweetfire

<comment><USER2> I'm curious: Did you guys start this before Twitter declared that they didn't want to see more third-party clients, or did you guys just roll the dice and hope they were feeling kind?

<comment><USER3> It's not a matter of hoping Twitter are feeling kind because they haven't taken any technical measures -- at least not yet -- to stop new third-party clients being developed. They own and control what I assume to be the most popular clients on every major platform (iOS, Android WinPhone, Mac, and, now that they own Tweetdeck, Windows). The whole point of the "don't make any new clients" announcement was to communicate their desire to control the user experience (i.e. the clients) for the majority of Twitter users, so I'd be surprised if they felt the need to discourage third-party developers further.

<comment><USER2> They can't stop people developing them, but they can revoke the access token and make them pretty much useless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So very sick of SpringBoard clones within apps...

<comment><AUTHOR> that's ok, I was so very sick of the 4/5-button tab bar at the bottom of every twitter client.

<comment><USER5> but the tab bar is within apple's design guidelines. it also makes navigation a whole lot easier because you don't have to go back to the springboard.

<comment><AUTHOR> true, however guidelines are just that. and sometimes rules are meant to be broken.

<comment><USER5> yes but I'd argue apple is right when they say don't make springboard UIs (which they did @ WWDC). Think about it. If a user opens up a program in windows, and he get another UI that looks like windows, he would be very confused.

<comment><USER6> With Lion, Apple broke their own OSX UI guidelines. Sometimes to innovate you have to break the rules.

<comment><USER5> different tastes I suppose but I've never found springboard type apps visually appealing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I couldn't find the time someone sent a tweet. That is pretty important to me.

The home screen is a very good idea. I only with that my picture wasn't among the other icons. It doesn't seem to fit, but it's a good idea anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

Where were you looking that you couldn't find a tweet timestamp? I'm pretty obsessed with timestamps myself so I made sure to put them everywhere they could go.

If you add more items to the homescreen (especially other users), your icon won't look so out of place. Plus, that is also where you can tweak the settings for your own account. In testing, people wanted to double and triple verify that their tweets were actually posted, and having a shortcut to their own timeline fixed that need (among others).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks a lot like the BlogFire app that the Notifo guys put out.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's because it is :)

<comment><USER8> Yeah just realized that you're a Notifo dude, ha.</comment></comment></comment>


PGAdmin 4 demo: Try it in your browser!! - <AUTHOR> https://www.pgadmin.org/try/ <comment><AUTHOR> Really, How does it work ?</comment>


Ask HN: What legal notices do I need on my website? - <AUTHOR>

Is this even something I can find out, or is it something I have to have a lawyer for? <comment><USER2> My $.02 -

I handle quite a bit of PPC of clients using google adwords. There has been quite a bit of buzz about what policies to include to be compliant and I just extrapolated that if it's a requirement for Google when it comes to advertising it's not a bad thing to have on your site for other purposes.

[http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/adwords-gets-serious- abo...](http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/adwords-gets-serious-about- privacy-policies)

I always configure a:

Privacy Policy Terms of Service Copyright symbol Designated agent and DMCA

</comment><comment><USER3> IANAL, but I think the short version is: if you're not handling money, it probably doesn't matter. If you are handling money, you need a lawyer.

</comment><comment><USER4> You should have a copyright notice to protect your content. If your website has people sign up then you should have a privacy notice (which people have to agree to when signing up).

The only other thing you may want would be a terms of service and that's fairly rare to see.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you're in the US and hosting user uploaded content it would be wise to have a DMCA notice and a designated agent. See the DMCA link at the bottom of this page for an example.</comment>


Directory Traversal / Local File Inclusion on addons.mozilla.org - <AUTHOR> http://nealpoole.com/blog/2011/02/mozilla-web-security-bug-bounty-directory-traversal-local-file-inclusion-on-addons-mozilla-org/

<comment><AUTHOR> This was my most recent report as part of the Mozilla Web Security Bug Bounty (<http://www.mozilla.org/security/bug-bounty-faq-webapp.html>). It also happens to be the first one that was marked public, so I decided to publish my writeup.</comment>


Hamster - Efficient, Immutable, Thread-Safe Collection classes for Ruby - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/harukizaemon/hamster/

<comment><USER3> Is it just me or is anyone else annoyed about Ruby people calling their hash table based dictionaries a "hash"? As a non-Ruby programmer, I always get confused when people talk about hashes and you can never be quite sure if it's a dictionary or an integer hash value.

<comment><USER4> from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash>

Hash may refer to: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_table>

i'm sure it's not just you though, people get annoyed over whole bunch of things

<comment><USER3> I first started hearing the word used that way about at the same time as Ruby started becoming more popular.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not to be a pedant, but wouldn't thread-safe automatically follow immutable?

If a structure is immutable, how would you be able to fuck it up, even if you abuse it via threading? I would argue the relation is so strong, that something which _isn't_ thread-safe cannot be immutable. But there may ofcourse be something which I'm missing.

Different languages and platforms handling different key concepts differently etc.

Is there some properties of Ruby which makes this possible, or gives you a need for a double-guarantee, or is the declaration here simply redundant?

<comment><USER6> Consider a balanced tree that only exposes an immutable interface but uses destructive updates internally when rebalancing. In principle it would be immutable, though it wouldn't necessarily be threadsafe without additional work.

<comment><USER5> From my point of view, that would not be something I considered a immutable data-structure.

But I guess at this point we are starting to argue technicalities and it's getting quite outside the scope of this submission.

I'll just take a mental note with regard to immutable evidently being a lossy concept ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hmm, I assumed this would have to be written in C so that it could use multiple threads in parallel in MRI, but it seems not. Then I remembered concurrent != parallel.

<comment><USER8> You forget that MRI isn't the only Ruby implementation. JRuby has no GIL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9>
        def dup
          self
        end

Weehee, immutability is great at some things.

</comment><comment><USER10> How many people do multi threading in ruby? I'm assuming this is mostly for jruby?

<comment><USER11> I use threading in MRI ruby quite often… maybe I'm the odd man out here.

<comment><USER12> Threading in MRI is still entirely appropriate for juggling IO. So that makes two of us.

<comment><USER10> I guess I jumped to quickly to the conclusion that more work would be done in Ruby. I suppose it works for IO. I like non-blocking libraries like em-http- request and event machine for these things.

If I wanted to do concurrent programs, I usually chose C :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As of git HEAD at the time of this comment (5edce74):

1499 lines of Ruby code.

19 lines of comments.

Nope, nope, nope. I would never touch this library.

Good amount of tests, but the moment this library doesn't work as expected and you need to jump into the code, you're completely screwed.

Not usable.

<comment><USER14> didn't look at the code but if it's good code, why would you need more comments? Good code explains itself.

<comment><USER15> Do you have an example of good code that explains rationale or "why" without comments? I rarely come across code and can't figure out what it's doing, but I routinely come across code and can't figure out why it's doing something. And I haven't found a good way to deal with that outside of comments or some external documentation. I'd love to see examples of code that's able to overcome this.

<comment><USER14> Well done code has good variables, good method/function naming and small methods/functions. If you have those 3 parts, you won't need any comments because it's self explanatory.

Comments often tend to explain the same thing as the code exactly does and what you see w/o looking at the comment. Also, they tend to be forgotten - <USER2> someone changes the code, he/she often doesn't change the comment. As a result, you'll have an outdated comment which can confuse you.

I recommend "Clean Code"[1] for more info on this subject. Beside other chapters, there's a chapter about what's a good and what's a bad comment.

[1]: [http://www.amazon.com/Clean-Code-Handbook-Software- Craftsman...](http://www.amazon.com/Clean-Code-Handbook-Software- Craftsmanship/dp/0132350882/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341586548&sr=8-1&keywords=clean+code)

<comment><USER15> I've never come across self-documenting code that can explain "why," which is what I was seeking. The closest thing I've ever come across was a PhD student working on a system called Seurat, but even that was really metadata attached to the code (something akin to an SCM). I agree clean code can help with the "what" or the "how", but that's almost never the problem to begin with.

In any event, I was looking for solid examples, not a general discussion on whether comments are good or bad. We clearly are not going to agree on that point so we'll save the Internet another pointless argument :-)

<comment><USER14> Ok I might have misunderstood you ;) Well I'm not saying comments are generally bad. But I think a lot of comments can be replaced by better code :) Solid examples I can't really show you atm (I'm not yet there where I'd say from myself that I write the cleanest code ever) ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Appeals court upholds FCC's net neutrality order - <AUTHOR> http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/court-upholds-obama-backed-net-neutrality-rules-224309 <comment><USER2> How we got to the point where utility-style regulation is seen as the key to ensuring a free and open internet is a true puzzle.

Utility-style regulation gives regulators plenary authority over the internet - meaning full and complete. Their power to do this or to forbid that is highly discretionary and essentially boundless.

This in turn gives a gatekeeper role to the regulators: you play by their rules or you don't play. And that means they have final say over what happens across the internet, at least within U.S. jurisdiction.

So today they say net neutrality rules.

Tomorrow maybe it is price controls in the name of consumer fairness. Or maybe it is mandated compliance with government snooping orders in the name of national security. Or who knows what not?

Why not? With a utility-style regulatory framework, you essentially have a form of administrative law run wild, legally speaking. Standards are exceedingly vague, power is wildly broad, and (in the end) he who has the most power and pull to control the regulators winds up having the final say over what the law is or is not as it affects the internet.

This is the exact antithesis of the largely hands-off idea of what the government could do with respect to the internet over the past several decades.

Of course law tends to conform in the short term to what people want and, today, most people truly do want a free and open internet. Therefore, the risk of any existential threat to internet freedom is either minimal or non- existent _in the short term_.

But if your idea of preserving maximum internet freedom is in effect to place a loaded gun to its head and then declare it is not a problem because it is the good guys who control it and who therefore will use it only for good purposes, then you have what you want with utility-style regulation of the internet.

It might just work great as long as the good guys are in control. But what happens when it changes some day? And, if you think it cannot, then you have far, far more faith in human nature than I can possibly summon.

Welcome to the brave new world.

<comment><USER3> I think you're ignoring the very real problems with the Internet infrastructure while you raise alarms about prospective problems. The reason utility-style regulation is a good thing is because the Internet is a utility. And like most other utilities, natural monopolies arise and the free market is distorted. There is already a gun to the head of the Internet, but instead of being putatively controlled by the populous at large it is controlled by entrenched rent-seeking oligopolists who are beholden only to shareholders that do not care about the function of the market.

Yes, there is a risk that the regulators will declare any number of rules for any number of reasons. Yes, regulatory capture of regulators is a real problem. The solution to these two problems is not to cede control to multinational corporations. Your lack of faith in human nature should extend to all humans, not just ones who are the apparatus of the state.

<comment><USER4> > Your lack of faith in human nature should extend to all humans, not just > ones who are the apparatus of the state.

It's not that there's some reason to preternaturally trust corporations and to distrust the state, it's that the apparatus of the state is infinitely more powerful. If a corporation acts unethically, you lose the benefits and service it provides. If the state acts unethically, you lose your freedom and/or your life. That's a colossal difference.

Likewise, if the choice is between Google controlling access to the internet and Chinese-style regulation controlling access to the internet, there's really no choice at all: who would pick Chinese internet service over Google Fiber? And make no mistake: with utility-style regulation the only boundary between the FCC and the PRC is "the people", and if this year's election has shown anything, they are a fickle and largely ignorant bunch. "Utility-style regulation" isn't an epithet because the internet shouldn't be treated as a utility; it's an epithet because utility regulation over the past hundred years has been absolutely disastrous, enabling the supreme power of corporations, not limiting it. It's really, really sad to see the internet falling into the hands of telecoms and the FCC.

<comment><USER5> "absolutely disastrous"?

I am 44 years old, which means I remember growing up at a time when you were not allowed to own a telephone -- because AT&T exercised its corporate monopoly to control what you could plug into your AT&T phone line, and they would only permit that to be an AT&T phone, and they would not ever sell you an AT&T phone, they would only rent you one at an exorbitant price. And they didn't bother to provide you any variety in models, because why would they? There's one phone, that is what you get.

Also, if you wanted to call someone in a different area code, then I hope you are ready to shell out some cash...

If it weren't for state-exercised power, it is quite possible that things would still be this way.

I do not consider today's situation a disaster at all, relatively speaking. (For sure there are still many un-ideal things about it.)

<comment><USER6> To resolve the matter of being unallowed to plug anything non-AT&T into AT&T phone lines, you can just make a law stating that anything that can operate compatibly on the network is allowed to participate, something that allows consumers to bring their own device. You don't have to have utility-style control, nor do you have to break up the company, to resolve that particular issue.

<comment><USER7> This is exactly what happened _because of the FCC_ in 1968.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carterfone](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carterfone)

<comment><USER8> I was about to post this and say that the parent comment does not remember this because it happened 4 years before their birth.

<comment><USER7> Tbh, it happened a number of years before my birth as well, but some of us choose to learn the history of computation / networking. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can someone explain what this means? The term "net neutrality" has been muddled so much that I can't tell if it means what it actually says, or if it's distorted doublespeak that actually means the opposite.

Is this decision good or bad for us?

<comment><USER10> This is the core of what was upheld:

"No Blocking: broadband providers may not block access to legal content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices.

"No Throttling: broadband providers may not impair or degrade lawful Internet traffic on the basis of content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices.

"No Paid Prioritization: broadband providers may not favor some lawful Internet traffic over other lawful traffic in exchange for consideration of any kind—in other words, no "fast lanes." This rule also bans ISPs from prioritizing content and services of their affiliates."

This is a good thing. Big telcos have been trying to gut the FCC of its power ever since they issued their Open Internet Order: [https://www.fcc.gov/general/open-internet](https://www.fcc.gov/general/open- internet)

Next stop is the supreme court if they continue to push back against it.

<comment><USER11> > Next stop is the supreme court if they continue to push back against it

More likely the next stop is Congress. Reversing basically everything the FCC has done with the internet and making sure the FCC does not do any such things again is a major goal of the Republicans and they currently have majorities in the House and the Senate.

Their presumptive presidential nominee, Trump, is also against net neutrality, seeing it as a liberal attack on conservatives: "Obama's attack on the internet is another top down power grab. Net neutrality is the Fairness Doctrine. Will target conservative media" [1].

[1] [https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/53260835850816716...](https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/532608358508167168?lang=en)

<comment><USER12> I can understand why Republicans don't like net neutrality. I cannot fathom at all the argument made by Trump that a law requiring equal access to both liberal and conservative media, not to mention everything in between and outside, is going to "target conservative media". Is he saying that if people have equal access to all, that they will reject conservative media?

<comment><USER13> You're mistaken if you think that trump is presenting any kind of rational argument. Instead he is appealing to his voter base, many of whom feel that the mainstream media and Silicon Valley companies are silencing conservative viewpoints. See search terms: "Google biased towards Hillary", "Facebook censoring conservative news", "conservative msm", "conservative lamestream media".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Second to last nail in the coffin. Yay. Sometimes the interests of hundreds of millions of people can in fact outweigh the interests of two corporations. With so many things about our society under attack, this is good news. attack,

<comment><USER15> An alternative way to look at it: the value in the network is due to the networking effects, which is contributed by the network members --- the value provided by the two corporations is slight in comparison. This is the same as in property value --- a McDonalds located in downtown San Francisco is quite a different proposition to one located in the middle of a prairie, and the value isn't in the building, but the availability of patrons that comes from a flourishing neighborhood.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What are the specifics in regard to peering? It seemed like with Netflix there was some confusion and FUD and it was hard to know the exact facts.

Normally as a business you are required to purchase bandwidth from bandwidth providers. I would assume this would still stand.

What counts as throttling? If an ISP has multiple peering connections with backbone providers are they forced to upgrade their hardware to compensate for all the traffic coming from their peer? If so, what counts as sufficient quality?

If they upgrade some peering connections and not others is that breaking Net Neutrality?

My understanding, not sure if it is correct, was that Netflix had traffic on an Internet backbone and Comcast was selectively throttling traffic within the peering connection based on whether it was Netflix traffic. I can see how that is discriminatory and wrong.

Anyone have more details about how all this works specifically?

</comment><comment><USER17> Generally glad that the order was upheld. I do wish that zero rating was more clearly defined, but regulation is just as much a reactive task as a proactive one, and it will be interesting to see how the ISPs use that tool in their toolbox. My suspicion is that we would see general price increases but then a 'zero rating' for, say, streaming video, making it seem like a good deal. Video seems cheaper but is really just subsidized by the rest of the content.

I see a parallel there to how the health insurance situation in America seems to have played out over the last few years from the view point of the average middle class developer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Really, really good point! The FCC is deciding the outcome of those plans now, groups are calling for an open process to the decision so that there isn't any bad ruling before people can weigh in and all sides looked at.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Good! What about efforts to repeal monopolistic state bans on municipal broadband? FCC was also in the middle of some court cases about it. Is there any progress?

</comment><comment><USER19> Can someone explain why T-Mobile is legally allowed to provide free streaming for YouTube and Netflix? Didn't net neutrality prevent that? Or am I just out of the loop?

The thing is... I _like_ them preferentially treating YouTube and Netflix traffic by not counting it towards my bandwidth limit. The "fair" alternative sucks: I would simply not stream on my phone anymore because it would be too expensive.

<comment><USER20> The fair alternative could be to not count any streaming video service traffic towards your data usage.

<comment><USER19> And how would T-Mobile be compensated for that? AFAIK, the reason they're able to do this is because Netflix, Youtube, etc. pays them to be part of the program.

<comment><USER21> It's in T-Mobile's interest to do this for its own network management. The unlimited video is of much lower quality, using less bandwidth. The only agreement between T-Mobile and Netflix/YouTube is for T-Mobile to be allowed to control which quality is served over their network.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does this mean I can finally watch HBO GO on my PS4 via my Comcast account?

<comment><USER23> Nope. It means that, should you ever be able to log in to HBO GO on your PS4 with your Comcast account, Comcast won't be able to do much to degrade the stream.

The authentication of pay services is outside the purvue of Net Neutrality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> How does this relate to high frequency trading and paying more to get access to servers closer to the exchange?

Is that paid prioritization / a fast lane? Or is that just purchasing a better plan?

Where is the line drawn?

<comment><USER24> Usually this is done over private leased lines, either as a dedicated fiber run or on a switched network.

If you're worried about tens of milliseconds worth of latency, you don't route your traffic over the public internet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Hurray for common sense!

</comment><comment><USER26> I think it'll be a while before we are out of the woods on this one. The culprits continue to thumb their nose at the FCC and openly challenge their authority.

</comment><comment><USER27> The politicians know they can never get past the technologists; not because they make them so much money, but because they're smarter than they are.

</comment><comment><USER28> Can ISPs still charge for more bandwidth?

<comment><USER29> Yes? Why would you think they couldn't? They just can't change you more or change your bandwidth based on the services you use.

What I really want is something akin to guarantees on the bandwidth, or something like 95%ile billing. Why should I pay for something that I'm not being given (and yes, before people start saying it's legal because of the contract, I'm not arguing that, I'm saying they're selling 50, I'm getting 20, consistently.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Url changed from [http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/14/11487124/fcc-net- neutralit...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/14/11487124/fcc-net-neutrality- open-internet-order-appeal-ruling-lawsuit), which points to this.

</comment><comment><USER31> Tom Wheeler says this:

"Notably, the Open Internet Order does not affect zero-rating services like T-Mobile's BingeOn or Verizon's Go90, which are intentionally left out of the scope of the order. "I can argue there are some aspects of [zero rating] that are good, and I can argue there's some aspects of it that are not so good," Wheeler told The Verge in an interview in March. "The job of the regulator is to figure out, 'Okay, now how do I deal with this?'"

Outrageous behavior, followed up by outrageous commentary. This FCC is out of control. How does anyone invest in wireless with regulators like this? Is Tom Wheeler even aware of the chilling affect of commentary like this?

Edit: The quote above is from the fine article.

Wmeredith: I'm talking about is Tom Wheeler, chair of the FCC. In this particular quote, the regulator of the laws is saying (at least as far as I can tell), that he's going to pick and choose which players he regulates. Should I assume you're arguing that my quote from the article is fud, or is it my commentary? Or my interpretation of it?

I'm not being a troll. I have an honest disagreement that this is the right thing to do. Would you invest in any climate with a regulator who says things like this? It seems wildly more risky to me.

<comment><USER32> Can someone give us a quick summary of why the two mentioned services are problematic?

<comment><USER33> I believe the gist of the argument is that zero-rating is essentially reverse prioritization.

In other words, if T-Mobile is giving Pandora privileges on the network that any mom-and-pop startup streaming service doesn't have access to, does it really matter if T-Mobile is charging the customer for that? Since it still effectively stifles innovation by new players (a core tenet of Wheeler's net neutrality argument).

<comment><USER34> If Pandora pays T-Mobile to zero-rate their traffic, that's a problem, right?

Is there a problem if Pandora were to offer an overage-fee rebate benefit to T-Mobile customers? It's effectively the same thing, except they are paying end users rather than the middle-man. I personally don't see a problem with that and that makes me think that the simpler option of just paying the middle-man (T-Mobile) for zero-rating should be okay as well.

<comment><USER35> > Is there a problem if Pandora were to offer an overage-fee rebate benefit to > T-Mobile customers?

Yes, because it's clearly the same thing, and it has the same problem.

Suppose the ISP owns or has some "unrelated" partnership with Pandora. Now the money Pandora is "paying" is just money the ISP is passing back to them under the table through the other relationship, and the ISP is really only disadvantaging Pandora's competitors because the ISP stands to collect some of the rents from thwarting competition.

<comment><USER11> 1\. Suppose that I run a subscription music service, and I have no relationship with T-Mobile other than the fact that some of my customers use T-Mobile to access my service.

I track each of my customer's usage, figure out from IP addresses how much of their usage was on their T-Mobile connection, and rebate them my estimate of what T-Mobile will charge them for that usage.

Is there a problem with this? If so, how would you address it?

2\. Similar to #1, except now my subscription service includes a bandwidth limit. A given subscription plan is allowed a specified amount of music data per month from my servers. Again, I have no relationship with T-Mobile or any other carrier other than some of my customers using those carriers to access my servers.

Each month I buy each customer a prepaid data card for their carrier with sufficient bandwidth to cover one month of their subscription to my service.

Is there a problem? If so, how would you address it?

<comment><USER35> The issue is that nobody would ever do this because it's against their own interests. If one ISP charges per byte and you offer to pay the charge, you've deprived that ISP's customers of the incentive to switch to an ISP that doesn't do that (which you then wouldn't have to pay for) _and_ given every ISP that doesn't do that an incentive to start, so that you have to pay for them too. And then the ISPs can raise their fees without having to worry about losing customers because the people paying aren't the people deciding which ISP to use. It's economic suicide. Which is why it's rational to presume that anybody who suggests it is in bed with the ISP, which is then the obvious antitrust problem.

But let's just put the final nail in the coffin here. Does the music service want to pay their customers $1 for every gigabyte of music their customers listen to? Fine, pay it regardless of what the customer's ISP charges for bandwidth, the same amount to any customer on any ISP. If doing that is profitable then it's profitable regardless of what the ISP charges the customer, it's better for the music service because it doesn't give the ISP any pricing leverage on bandwidth charges, and if paying the customer money to encourage them to use the service works for customers with per-byte billing then it should work just as well for customers with unlimited plans, so the proposal will earn them even more customers.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Great image search:  add tags or click on images - <AUTHOR> http://labs.ideeinc.com/visual/#random=12118;

<comment><USER2> I tried a bunch of searches and only the first 2 worked. Then I realized there's no search only form. It's constantly adding tags.

Annoying for now.

</comment><comment><USER3> No uploading, big surprise!</comment>


Emoto – AI Robotic Sidekick Concept - <AUTHOR> http://emotoai.com <comment><USER2> That was kinda creepy. I'm not sure I want my phone to awaken and have eyes looking at me.

<comment><USER2> The platform itself was kinda cool but does it charge my phone while it's moving it around.</comment></comment>


The MPEG machine is ready to start (again) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.chiariglione.org/the-mpeg-machine-is-reasy-to-start-again/ <comment><USER2> IPR makes the mpeg world go round. Cents per chip add up.</comment>


The Reddit Problem - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@colep/the-reddit-problem-c8ead7875b90

<comment><USER2> I don't think discovery on Reddit itself matters to users. Google "mechanical keyboards" and the second link is r/mechanicalkeyboards. Good enough. And the sidebars generally provide curated, related subreddit links. Unless you want reddit to be your total, all-consuming news stream, but most users already have other, better sources for that.

The actual problem with Reddit is described very neatly here: <[http://gawker.com/so-long-reddit-1717315112>](http://gawker.com/so-long- reddit-1717315112>).

Why it won't be fixed is described neatly here: <[http://www.chuqui.com/2015/07/the-death-of- reddit/>](http://www.chuqui.com/2015/07/the-death-of-reddit/>).

<comment><USER3> HN's CMS doesn't interpret your angle brackets correctly; the first yields "No Posts Found" and the second 404s.

Here is the correction for the second:

[http://www.chuqui.com/2015/07/the-death-of- reddit/](http://www.chuqui.com/2015/07/the-death-of-reddit/)

but I wasn't able to figure out what to do with the first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wish there were more stories about reddit to read.</comment>


How to legally avoid paying taxes, just like Google. - <AUTHOR> http://www.fidusuisse-offshore.com/en/discover-offshore-video/the-offshore-double-irish-and-dutch-sandwich/

<comment><USER2> Yeah, make a decent video and add an annoying soundtrack that's louder than the speaker. Unwatchable.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm more annoyed that this company even exists. At first I thought it was a nice way to describe how they avoid taxes, turns out that this company provides these "solutions" to businesses.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is it possible to restore gaming innocence after becoming a gamedev? - <AUTHOR> It's my first time asking HN, sorry if I make any mistakes.
To put it short, after I learned how games are made it all lost a bit of that sparkle for me. Characters became sprites/meshes, beautiful landscapes 'terrains with sky domes' (I think you get where I'm going with this). The point is, I miss a lot of that innocence that made things "magical" and mysterious. (Ok Doom's engine is still a mystery to me, I can't replicate that)
But making games... is a completely different thing! For some reason it makes me happy and complete. I simply love to get things moving on a screen and being "gamey". It's the best way I found to learn programming/programming languages.
What about you? Can you shift from dev to player mode?
Merry Xmas everyone! <comment><USER2> Never happened to me and I created a few games in the past.

If the story or gameplay is good, I don't care.

It's like music, I can listen to it actively as a musician and I can listen to it as a fan.</comment>


Birds that fear death - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150930-the-birds-that-fear-death <comment><USER2> One time a _raven_ of all things fell down my chimney and was perched on a ledge interior to the chimney above the fireplace. I got a call about it early in the day asking me to come home and deal with it, but I couldn't get away, so I said I'd deal with it when I got home.

It spent the next several hours trying fruitlessly to fly back up the chimney. Its wings were too large to spread, so it only got about half way up before slowly sliding back down. When it wasn't trying to escape, it was making scary pissed-off raven noises.

I ended up having to lay down face up in the fireplace and reach up with gloves (and my arms wrapped in towels) to grab the bird, get up, and walk it outside. It was mortified and tried to fly away before I got to the door, but was disoriented and flew into a wall instead. I think it was too stunned to resist at that point, and so I picked it up and brought it outside. After a few moments it flew up into the Japanese maple in my front yard.

There were some crows in this same tree that observed the whole escapade and decided to start caw-caw-cawing at me. _And then for the next month they kept doing it._ Turns out that yelling at them that I had saved one of them and that it was my tree anyway didn't actually succeed in shutting them up.

<comment><USER3> It's an irrational reaction to a traumatic situation. Although we theoretically have better tools to reason with, humans sometimes react in the same way to these situations. Ambulance crews and emergency workers in general could probably fill books with these events.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I had a breeding pair of peregrine falcons living over my porch and there are also many crows that live nearby. One day the falcons had caught and partially eaten a crow who managed to escape the nest and make it to the ground. Every single crow within at least a mile radius (probably close to a hundred) showed up and some of them tried to fight with the falcons. They were loud and quite agitated for a couple of hours. For the rest of the time while the falcons were nesting I stopped feeding the crows peanuts because they steered clear of the area, as soon as the falcons left they showed up again.

Crows are amazing creatures.

<comment><USER5> Oh yeah.

I once watched a murder of crows chase down a falcon. I never knew they could fly so aerobatically. They were flying faster than I'd ever seen a crow fly, and maneuvering in ways that I didn't think possible.

Now, when ever I hear crows going absolutely mad, I assume a bird of prey is near by, and almost aways, if you go out and look, you'll see the predator nearby.

Falcons and hawks tend to get out of Dodge really fast when 3-4 crows set their sights on them. They are out for an easy meal, and when confronted with opposition, they do their best to find a new location.

I really love crows.

<comment><USER6> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfY3QtGFSwk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfY3QtGFSwk)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is there an animal that does not fear death? I mean, try to swat a fly. Bees will swarm and attack if one of their swarm is killed or injured--it releases a pheromone. Or look at how a dog or cat responds and develops under abuse. They know what a threat is, and avoid it, which implies an aversion to death.

I'm continuously surprised at what researchers are surprised by, when it comes to animal behavior. Once it became obvious that we are ourselves animals, the default hypothesis should be that everything we experience, other animals experience as well; that we are indicative examples of a consistent set. Then we could look for differences.

Instead, the presumption is that animals experience none of the inner life that we do. IMO this goes back to religious and cultural beliefs from Europe, not from any scientific basis. Other cultures don't think this way. If you told a Native American or Tibetan Buddhist that crows are aware of death and perceive their surroundings, they would probably say "yes, of course."

<comment><USER8> Agree. While crows are exceptionally smart, I bet if other species are studied, similar results will be found, with regards to understanding the concept of death.

The one that gets me now is when people say something like "well I don't eat beef, but I am ok with eating fish because they are lower on the food chain." As if fish don't feel pain when they are killed. You either accept that what you are eating had to suffer when it died, and feel appropriate guilt (or not), or you don't eat any meat at all.

<comment><USER9> _" well I don't eat beef, but I am ok with eating fish because they are lower on the food chain."_

This is interesting, because many or most of the fish we eat are predators, while cows are herbivores. Fish are _higher_ on the food chain than cows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Recently, I noticed a juvenile crow that had been hit by a car in San Francisco, it was limping and unable to fly.

There were two crows near by that kept an eye on it. When I grabbed the injured crow and took it to my car [1] to deliver to a wildlife hospital [2], the two crows followed me to my car and called out. It was really intense. I felt bad for taking the crow away, but had hoped that I would be able to help it.

Ultimately the crows injuries were too bad to care for and the wildlife center [1] had to put it to sleep :(

It was pretty amazing to see the crows' behavior. They really seemed upset/concerned when I collected the injured juvenile, it seemed like sincere empathy which is something that's amazing to observe in non-humans. Heck, it's amazing to observe in humans :P

If you're in the bay area and find injured wildlife, please get in touch with the Lindsay.

[1] [https://instagram.com/p/3O6ymkm5-9/](https://instagram.com/p/3O6ymkm5-9/)

[2] [http://lindsaywildlife.org/](http://lindsaywildlife.org/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Thanks, I am now horrified of that lady in the mask holding a dead crow...

<comment><USER11> Did they do a control test with that mask and no dead bird? That fucking mask might be enough on its own.

/twajs

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Crows went into my mechanics shop, got up on a toolbox and stole a recently opened bag of in-shell sunflower seeds, without being seen, and had a sunflower seed-opening party in the back parking lot. (I arrived to pick up a vehicle to find the bag of nuts on the ground next to it and hundreds of empty shells all over the area, and the service writer laughing at finding someone's snack being snacked on elsewhere.)

Whether that implies some crows are smart or I should find another mechanic, is debatable.

<comment><USER13> >Whether that implies some crows are smart or I should find another mechanic, is debatable.

Not mutually exclusive. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Crows are interesting creatures. Liked this story from not long ago too. [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-31604026](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-31604026)

<comment><USER15> I wonder if the craw in Demon/Dark Souls game was inspired by something like that.

[http://demonssouls.wikidot.com/crow](http://demonssouls.wikidot.com/crow)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Crows have the mobbing behavior when one of them is attacked by a house cat, see: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRdm8JS3qpo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRdm8JS3qpo)

(hours of interesting "cat vs. bear/hawk/crow/snake/alligator/etc." videos available).

Maybe they are responding to a crow immobilized by another creature instead of recognizing a dead one.

</comment><comment><USER17> It's breeding season for magpies here (Australia) at the moment. So you're likely to get swooped expectantly. Recent studies have shown they recognise specific people they consider a threat and will swoop them year after year.

I remember as a kid watching our cat running from the shed up the back across the yard to the house. He was hunkered down, going like a bullet as a magpie dive-bombed him three times.

<comment><USER18> The Australian magpie is not a corvid. (European) Magpie is a very different bird.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Artist group Chim↑Pom also use this mobbing behaviour to perform ... some kind of statement.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iOmEKbCSGs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iOmEKbCSGs)

</comment><comment><USER20> Whilst on the bus earlier this week I was waiting for it to depart when I heard a loud thud on the roof. Shortly afterwards I heard another thud. It turned out that a crow had a large seed in its mouth, seemed to be a plum seed, and was dive-bombing the roof of the bus in an attempt to crack it. It succeeded on the third attempt.

They really are wonderful.

</comment><comment><USER21> Also see this documentary _A Murder of Crows_ :

[http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/a-murder-of-crows-full- episod...](http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/a-murder-of-crows-full- episode/5977/)

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm pretty sure I wouldn't take anything from the lady with the creepy mask holding a dead crow, either. Might make a good album cover for the right kind of band, though.

<comment><USER23> That image is absolutely horrifying. And standing there motionless for 30 minutes? Nope.

<comment><USER24> Now that is not only a scarecrow, it's a scarehuman.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> dark wings dark words</comment>


Final Xbox founder leaves Microsoft - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2011/05/25/final-xbox-founder-leaves-microsoft/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Venturebeat+%28VentureBeat%29&utm_content=Twitter

<comment><USER2> Leaves me even more curious for what the future of their hardware is.</comment>


The death of Firefox - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/116885-the-death-of-firefox <comment><USER2> Stay with Firefox everyone. We need an independent, community-governed browser.

<comment><USER3> Fully agreed.

And if Firefox goes, we'll only have WebKit browsers. And so you can forget about web standards and we'll be back at the _best viewed with Internet Explorer_ era. Competing implementations are a good thing for standards, and standards are good for all of us.

<comment><USER4> Do we need web standards if everyone is using webkit?

At least webkit is open source, unlike IE6

<comment><USER3> Do we need standards if eveybody is using Microsof Office? ;-)

Indeed, open source helps a lot. It is amazing how far KHTML has gotten. But still, no standards would mean no Opera, no Mozilla, no any other entrants to the game.

Anyway, this article prompted me to switch from Chrome to Aurora on my Android tablet. Feels good so far...

<comment><USER4> * Indeed, open source helps a lot. It is amazing how far KHTML has gotten. But still, no standards would mean no Opera, no Mozilla, no any other entrants to the game.*

Not necessarily, it would still be possible for them to embed webkit or even to re-implement it.

Webkit would simply become the reference implementation.

<comment><USER5> Reimplementing it would not be an option. Making WebKit the reference implementation would give Google and Apple such an enormous advantage in development cycles that any browser that didn't use it would be unable to compete. You'd be expelling everyone but Google and Apple from the W3C.

If WebKit becomes the standard, every user from now until forever will be using the same pile of C++ to browse. That may be fine to you; I personally don't think that WebKit is so good as to make it the gold standard for the Web. Imagine if that had happened with NCSA Mosaic...

<comment><USER4> If it is open source why would google and apple have a huge advantage?

Surely anybody else could even fork webkit if they so desired.

Having one pile of C++ to browse beats having multiple piles of C++ all with their own bugs an eccentricities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the author undervalues the power of Google in advertising. Seriously, every time I see the Google homepage, or a google property, there's an ad for Chrome. And, even better, the ad focuses on speed. That's what drove Chrome use up primarily (IMO, of course), though I can't doubt that word of mouth also had a large impact.

<comment><USER7> For a while, Chrome was bundled with Adobe's Flash Player installer. Chrome bundled Flash and Flash bundled Chrome. People downloading the Flash installer for Windows would also get Chrome, if they didn't opt out:

[http://www.salsitasoft.com/blog/2011/09/23/wonder-how- chrome...](http://www.salsitasoft.com/blog/2011/09/23/wonder-how-chrome-is- growing-market-share-ask-adobe/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Firefox still has a great chance. They've sped up their dev cycle to try to keep pace with Chrome. As soon as they finally end the ridiculous memory usage problems that persist to this day and enable silent auto-updates (auto-updates are coming soon, I think), they'll be back in the game.

I only recommend Chrome because it auto-updates. If one of my users starts using Chrome, I always know they'll have the latest and greatest. That's not yet the case with FF, but I'll recommend FF again as soon as the auto-updates land.

<comment><USER9> I like firefox. I really do. I've donated to Mozilla, and wear my resulting FF t-shirt with pride.

That said, it's not just auto-update that makes Chrome more attractive. The omnibox, polarizing though it may be, sets Chrome apart from every other browser as far as U[I|X] goes. Oddly enough, _that one feature alone_ is enough to make it my default browser. Were FF as fast as Chrome, I'd still use the latter because I just like using it more. Chrome's sandboxing, V8, and other intelligent features are just icing on the cake.

This, ultimately, confuses me more than anything about the other browser vendors' reaction to Chrome. They've copied or are copying just about everything about it: short release cycles, better JS engines, sandboxing... but not the one definitive UI feature that has made it so attractive to so many people. This surprises me. I would have though Apple, at least, with its commitment to minimalistic UIs, would have been quick to hop on that train, but no dice.

<comment><USER10> I've had a look at Google's docs[1], and it's really not clear to me what Chrome's omnibox offers that Firefox's address bar (or whatever they call it) doesn't.

[http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ans...](http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=95440)

<comment><USER9> I've got Aurora installed for Tor and flash-based apps that don't play nicely with Chrome, but I still use Chrome for my daily surfing and so have not really noticed any of the changes Mozilla has made. If the address bar really is reproducing the functionality of the omnibox, why not kill the search box all together? It seems like duplicated functionality and a waste of screen real estate.

<comment><USER10> I think the only use for the search box now is to give people easy access to multiple (or a secondary) search engine. Sure, it's ugly, but it does give users a clear and simple way to search wikipedia for "widgets".

Chrome, on the other hand, only exposes non-Google search engines through the search engine keyword thingy, which means a user has to actually type "en.wikipedia.org widgets" into the omnibox. Sure, tab-completion will do half the work, but the user still has to remember to start typing "en." rather than, say, "wikipedia".

I know that Chrome (and, indeed, Firefox) allow you to edit those search engine keywords, but that is power-user territory, and power-users can edit their Firefox UI as well. <http://i.imgur.com/mS5Ot.png>

<comment><USER11> Minor quibble, but Chrome makes it pretty easy to change your default search engine to anything you want, including non-Google search engines. It's not that you need to use a keyword to search a non-Google search engine, it's that you need to use a keyword to search a non-default search engine. :)

<comment><USER10> Also, the UI in Firefox for changing the address bar search engine is awful -- about:config, click through the warning, then find and edit keyword.URL (which is in a different format to everything else)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> You can pry it from my cold, dead hands.

I continue to insist on experiencing the web the way _I_ want to. Firefox -- together with its extensions -- continues to do the best job of this. (Although I have not been pleased with its GUI "Chromification".)

</comment><comment><USER13> Now that Chrome seems to be getting a bit more bloated and Firefox seems to be tightening it's belt, things will probably begin to even out.

<comment><USER14> Where is Chrome's bloat?

<comment><USER15> Chrome's memory usage is[1] (and always has been[2]) very high and has been steadily getting worse where Firefox has been getting better and better thanks to the memshrink project[3]

[1] [https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!...](https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!category- topic/chrome/report-a-problem-and-get-troubleshooting-help/ekoYAU_h32I)

[2] [http://techpp.com/2011/09/28/chrome-14-vs- firefox-7-memory-f...](http://techpp.com/2011/09/28/chrome-14-vs- firefox-7-memory-footprint-comparison/)

[3] <https://blog.mozilla.com/nnethercote/> talks about it frequently

<comment><USER16> I don't care about memory, i have 8GB and i am not somebody who has 500 tabs open. What i care about is independent processes. When a site freezes the rest is unaffected. The same with Icognito Mode, this is a total joke on Firefox.

What counts in the end is speed, security and api's.

<comment><USER9> >When a site freezes the rest is unaffected.

Interestingly, however, when Flash crashes on one tab it crashes on all of them.

<comment><USER17> That's because flash is a single process in all tabs. It's more of a problem with the way flash is designed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The problem with FireFox is that it wasn't fast enough to catch with the innovation in the browsers market. Google Chrome was getting fast and pretty good at rendering. Its minimalistic interface has also helped a lot.

By the time FireFox figured that out, it was already a little late. But the problem is that they approached it the wrong way. Instead of focusing on what made Google Chrome successful (simple interface, auto-updates, speed...) they even made it worse (I still find the interface not easy and friendly as chrome, multiple confusing versions, and not that fast)

<comment><USER19> I just want to know what is so complicated / confusing about firefox.

[https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-6cqbdjZl7gM/T2eqjPeprhI/A...](https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-6cqbdjZl7gM/T2eqjPeprhI/AAAAAAAAJiI/iWlQFXz8m9c/s1465/Screenshot+at+2012-03-19+17%3A51%3A55.png)

<comment><USER20> its not that firefox is complicated (its much better than it used to be). its that its more complicated / confusing than chrome.

<http://imgur.com/a/w1Gtq>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Chrome is less than 4 years old. The browser world can change fast. Grab the Firefox Nightly and help test.

<http://nightly.mozilla.org/>

In my opinion, there's no reason why you can't run both Firefox and Chrome. They're both free and they're both great.

</comment><comment><USER22> Seeing that Statcounter shot, I was taken aback at the graph, as I recently looked at some regional data myself: the picture in Europe is vastly different. See for yourself, e.g NA[0] vs EU[1]

[0] <http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-na-monthly-201102-201202>

[1] <http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-eu-monthly-201102-201202>

<comment><USER23> What I actually find interesting is that the Firefox trend already seems to be turning around again... Over the past few months, the decline has been slowed, and the latest data point has Firefox actually gaining share.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I use both. (Especially since Google started only allowing you to login to one gmail session at once, but I used both before that.) Currently there are about three things that keep me from using Chrome entirely, because I do think it's a better overall browser but not better for my particular use case.

The first is lack of the Tree Style Tabs extension (in general lack of extensions was my biggest problem with Chrome until recently; now they have NoScript and AdBlock and ctrl+shift+j is about as good as FireBug which were the deal-breakers for me before), the second is not eating up huge amounts of memory if I have 593 tabs loaded into it (which is currently what I have on this Firefox), the third is I don't like their URL box. Firefox's AwesomeBar is almost perfect, I just wish it had better coverage of my history+favorites (I'm sure there's an about:config option somewhere that tunes it).

</comment><comment><USER25> Firefox forced me to learn how SVG works to do clipping and masking, which turned out to be pretty awesome, so I owe that to them.

This article was completely without any substance beyond a graph of browser share stats. That's not necessarily evidence of Firefox "dying", rather than of the market simply expanding outside of its target demographic. In any case, as a web developer, Firefox will remain a critical browser to support for the foreseeable future, and as a user, I still haven't found a better overall option to use in Windows or Linux (I've stuck with Safari in OS X mainly due to the increased performance, stability and vastly superior font rendering).

</comment><comment><USER26> Those who are worried about the memory in FF, do you know there is an option that will not load the tabs until you click on it.

I have around 700 tabs open but at a time only 10 or less are loaded.

Tools/options/General "Don't load tabs until selected"

<comment><USER27> That option seems to be for loading previous tabs on start up. I don't see it doing anything for normal tab use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I don't know what it is exactly they need to do, but strategically, Firefox needs to attract browser power-users once again. Firefox is losing because most of them have already switched to Chrome. And when that happens, it's only a matter of time before the mainstream does it, too, under their recommendation.

<comment><USER7> What features does Firefox need to retain power users or even win back Chrome switchers?

This is a tough problem. Google's money and manpower enabled Chrome to quickly reached feature parity with Firefox. Google undoubtedly spends more developing and advertising Chrome than they pay Mozilla.

Short of some Google privacy scare, there may not be enough technical reasons for someone to switch back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Chrome really is orders of magnitude faster than FF. It starts up instantly compared to any other browser I've used (FF, IE, Opera)

If FF had the speed of chrome, I'd consider switching back. I really want to try Pentadactyl for FF, but I can't stand how slow FF is sometimes.

<comment><USER23> How long ago did you last try it? The Mozilla team has been kicking some ass over the last few months.

<comment><USER19> I completely agree. The biggest difference I have noticed, ironically, is while loading _google+_ (try it, firefox 10/11 is faster). The only reason I would use chrome over firefox is because of the incognito mode. I like randomly opening a page in incognito mode without losing my current session.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Things might be different but the last time I checked I could not find chrome addons that are equivalent to NoScript, RequestPolicy and AdBlock. These three addons are keeping me firmly in the firefox camp...

</comment><comment><USER31> Just about every developer I know has Firefox on their machine, but that's just because our automated tests tend to be written for Firefox. Almost none of the teams I have been a part of use Firefox for development, and even fewer for personal browsing. Chrome's market share grab has been quite impressive.

My most recent experience was with a client who was locked into IE for years, made the switch to Google Apps, and subsequently discovered the speed of Chrome. Phrased as "lots of our users skipped Firefox," it sounded like Firefox was in no-man's land.

<comment><USER32> I personally still use FF as my main development browser, it may be familiarity but I like the development tools in FF more than the ones offered in Chrome. Chrome may have the slight edge in features as far as development tools go, but I find that FF's tools have a better workflow. As well, the new 3D view of the DOM is in and of itself a big reason to use it as a development browser. As the DOM has become more complicated we have desperately needed such a tool to visualize the layering of elements on the page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I've been using it since Firebird and tried to stick with for as long as I could on my Mac, but after trying Chrome recently, annoyed by performance issues (memory management, flash video, etc.) the difference was so big that it was impossible to justify to keep using FF. Been really happy with Chrome since. Incredibly fast browser in comparison.

</comment><comment><USER34> The article seems to assume that a declining market share means that Firefox is going to "die" and that you should start switching. This might make sense for a company, but not that much for an open source project. Firefox could stay very healthy with a much lower market share as long as the right people are still using it (and developing it).

</comment><comment><USER35> Chromium is open source, which Chrome is based on. I don't understand what everyone is complaining about. Chromium will always be around, so if you're paranoid about Google sneaking in some stuff into Chrome to steal your info, then use Chromium. I like Mozilla, but they haven't been able to keep up in my book.

</comment><comment><USER36> I still use FF for daily browsing. I have Chrome installed and use it for webdev but there are some annoyances (like adblock not working very well) which keep it from being my everyday browser.

I anticipate problems in the future, however, when I won't have access to Flash unless I use Chrome (I'm on Linux).

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm at the point where I keep both Chrome and FF open. Chrome for work and FF for browsing, where I find Treestyle Tabs too valuable to lose. I've pretty much given up on there being a true Chrome equivalent at this point, but I would probably switch if there was one.

</comment><comment><USER38> Stop versioning Firefox so rapidly and people will come back. Firefox 5 - Firefox 11 in 1 year. Come on Mozilla... switch back to minor version numbers. I don't think they realize how this perception negatively effects the regular consumer.

<comment><USER39> Actually, the "regular consumer" has no idea that Firefox even had version numbers to begin with. Iterating quickly with nearly automatic updates was a huge step in the right direction.

<comment><USER40> I have to wonder if that isn't actually going to be a problem from now on, not a technical one but a marketing problem. Major version upgrades used to be a big deal and brought lots of publicity even outside narrow tech circles. Now they aren't going to get that for free. Google pushes Chrome a lot in ads, Firefox don't have that. So what are they going to do to spread the word?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'd switch to Chrome because it is speedier, but Chrome doesn't provide me bookmarks tags for all of my local bookmarks. So Firefox is holding just because of that.

</comment><comment><USER42> It still disgusts me that Internet Explorer has users at all. Even IE9 is still unbearably bad, especially from the web developer point of view. I wish the rest of the world would have realized this and ousted Microsoft from a business it has no place in.

<comment><USER43> IE9 is light years ahead of anything else Microsoft has put out and IE10 will be amazing in comparison as well.

That said, a large percentage of IE9 users are corporations which don't want to support non-Microsoft browsers, new end-users who don't have a clue about anything that's not Microsoft, and the millions of foreigners who just use what's provided.

Supporting IE9 isn't that bad as it used to be to support older IE browsers.

<comment><USER44> I don't get IE9. It's not compatible with the legacy IE6 rubbish, and yet not conformant enough with HTML5 etc so it requires much extra work to support compared to FF, Chrome, Safari. Thank goodness for Chrome Frame.

<comment><USER45> HTML5 isn't a standard yet, so how can you be conformant?

<comment><USER42> It's not a standard, but I can tell you that tech innovators do not stand around and wait for some committee to decide "Oh yea, uhh lets make HTML5 the standard now". No matter what the standards say, any respectable web browser should be making their best effort to "conform" to the latest technology.

<comment><USER46> Yea, the W3C requires two implementations for a standard to make it to Proposed Recommendation now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Google decided to kill Firefox. Not by lack of financial support, but by giving their own browser radically more financial support (the homepage marketing alone is worth an astronomical sum). There was never going to be enough room in the market for four or five major browsers, each with a lot of market share - markets consolidate naturally. Once Chrome gained traction, Firefox was destined to fall down to Opera's levels.

<comment><USER48> It's been a bit harder to kill off NCSA Mosaic/MCOM/Netscape/Mozilla Foundation than people had imagined; and people have been imaging killing them off for 16 years or so.

The likes of Clark, Andreesen & jwz built an idea in 1995 that will not die. it just wont. they can lose their nsf funding, aol can buy up the remains and then discard it; google can use it as advertising space and then go elsewhere, they can take 5 years between netscape 4.0 and mozilla 1.0, but they will not die.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> i'm too paranoid for chrome. stay with da fox.</comment>


AWS CDK with a real life Lambda and API gateway example - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/shaftoe/introducing-aws-cdk-with-a-real-life-lambda-and-api-gateway-example-7kg <comment><AUTHOR> After successfully replacing Terraform with CDK in a real life project I take the chance to wrap up the new knowledge along with some Terraform vs. CDK kind of considerations. I also synthesize the acquired know-how in a mini tutorial based on the actual code used in the production scenario.</comment>


Google hiring a head of Republican political advertising - <AUTHOR> https://careers.google.com/jobs#!t=jo&jid=/google/head-of-industry-republican-political-washington-dc-usa-2513100053 <comment><USER2> Folks, this is not uncommon for the ad industry. Political entities run a lot of ads, and they don't want to disclose what they are doing to their opponents. The obvious answer is to have one team for Dems, one team for GOP, and a team for orgs (since coordination with candidates is illegal).

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there a corresponding head of Democrat political advertising? Will they have to share an office resulting in sitcom hilarity?

> We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, > ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, > citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status.

Good for you. The Republican party really isn't.

<comment><USER4> I'm foreign and maybe I'm mixing stuff up here but I always thought that giving companies (like Google) the right to decide on whom to employ is percieved to be deeply republican.

<comment><USER5> I think what he is saying is that the media has painted the Republican Party as the party of homogeneity that supports the majority of people here (typically Caucasian and older). Recently it also portrays them as wanting to scale back certain civil rights/liberties.

Whether or not there is truth to these portrayals is a rabbit hole I dare not enter this morning :)

<comment><USER6> You might not want to, but I do, because there is. I absolutely can't stand the term "the media has painted," as though the media is this single conglomerate where somebody (clearly not old white men, though?) pulls strings and sets the narrative. Remember, Fox News and Breitbart are just as much "the media" as anyone else.

The extremely liberal National Review concluded just before the election: "Republicans have failed for the past half century to attract non-white voters . . . Republicans have carried the white vote in every general election since 1968." However, it also notes that Mitt Romney won just 17% of the non-white vote.[1]

So I think you have it backwards. The media isn't painting Republicans as homogeneous; Republicans are homogenous, and frankly, aren't even all that worried about pointing it out. In fact, given the current trend towards ethno- nationalism, I think you might say some of them are proud of it.

[1][http://www.nationalreview.com/article/441595/voter- demograph...](http://www.nationalreview.com/article/441595/voter-demographics- diversifying-republicans-falling-behind)

<comment><USER7> > Mitt Romney won just 17% of the non-white vote.

(1) In the 2012 presidential race between a white and a black candidate, most white people voted for the white candidate, and most black people voted for the black candidate. I'm not sure what generalizations you can make about that.

(2) In any case, you've chosen a very poor number. Jill Stein won 1% of the non-white vote in 2016, but I hardly think that makes the Green party racist.

<comment><USER6> The point's not that the Republican party is racist (though they might be). The point is that the Republican party is mostly white people supporting the needs and desires of other white people.

<comment><USER7> If that is your point, I don't see why you bothered making it.

No comment about how well they do at "supporting needs and desires", but the Democratic party is also mostly white people. Turns out that's pretty common in a country of mostly white people.

<comment><USER6> Well, given that America is mostly white, it makes sense. But the Democratic party is also the party of the majority of non-white people, not just most non-white groups, but to my knowledge _all_ of them. That says something.

I bothered making it because understanding the demographics of an institution will help you understand its goals and behavior. I guess I'm not sure why you see no value in that.

<comment><USER7> It might be a rule of thumb, but it's hardly universal.

Bush Sr. got 55% of the Asian vote compared to only 31% for the winning Clinton.

<comment><USER6> Bill Clinton's last election was more than twenty years ago. Party composition and behavior has radically changed in that time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oh great. As if there isn't already enough to further entrench the two party system.</comment>


Longing for a past that never existed - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=3904

<comment><USER2> Most of this reported gain in life expectancy is due to reduced infant mortality. A better metric is to look at life expectancy of those who live past the age of 10.</comment>


Fascinating Google Doodle Which Lets the Blind See - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/news/google-doodle-pays-tribute-to-japanese-inventor-seiichi-miyake/ <comment><AUTHOR> The most interesting thing about this concept is for years I have been walking over these things on city streets and it took this Google Doodle for me to even know what they are. We live in a world that continues to astound me by the mere fact that we can see things in our life every day and not even know what they are.</comment>


Apple Pushes Deeper Into Mobile Payments - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303448204579341290395762338?mod=djemalertTECH

<comment><AUTHOR> Use this link instead. Thanks @ryanhuff.

[http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702303...](http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702303448204579341290395762338-lMyQjAxMTA0MDIwMzEyNDMyWj)

</comment><comment><USER2> Is it not possible to read wsj articles without logging in?

<comment><USER3> I was able to read the article without logging in. Try this link:

[http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702303...](http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702303448204579341290395762338-lMyQjAxMTA0MDIwMzEyNDMyWj)</comment></comment>


These 50 Startups May Be the Next 'Unicorns' - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/10/technology/these-50-start-ups-may-be-the-next-unicorns.html <comment><USER2> Glad to see a couple of them are from India.</comment>


Is Twitter Dividing The Happy From The Unhappy? - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2011/03/15/is-twitter-dividing-the-happy-from-the-unhappy

<comment><AUTHOR> _If there are any Twitter API developers looking for a Nobel Prize-worthy challenge, now would be the time to devise an app that could bring the two factions together in a state of semi-contentedness._

I guess that's an app which Twitter would like, seeing their recent developer news.</comment>


Dropbox founders personally cashing in on $300M round - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2011/08/08/dropbox-founder-liquidity/ <comment><USER2> "Content with cash, and more eager to spend it on homes and on a more balanced life-style, they may not want to keep driving the company as aggressively."

So I don't understand this thinking. You've built all this value (and a kick- ass team I would presume) and you're not allowed to take a few weeks off to go house-hunting or take a vacation? The only good CEO is an underpaid CEO? Jeez.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there something more to Dropbox?? 300M round of investment and an astronomical "fairytale" potential valuation of 10B, OMG AYFKM? For a company that provides online sync/storage of files??

That said, good for them, how many times do founders get the short end of the stick?

<comment><USER4> $10B for FancyFTP (as we call it in the office)? We find this as unsurprising as the activities of stock markets, banks, hyping writers and people. And Groupon. And companies. And politicians.

When's the right time to bring my degraded-buckyball communication unit to market?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Congrats to them!!</comment>


Can science determine the age of a Somali pirate? - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2216785/

<comment><USER2> The USA is going to lock him and up in the tortuous federal supermax prison no matter what age he is, international outrage be damned.

If Abduwali knew what he was in for he wouldn't have been smiling for the cameras. I would take life in Somalia over ADX without hesitation.

<comment><USER3> Offer them a lottery to live in American prisons and I can get you enough Somali youth to fill the justice system up in a weekend.

The American tough guys I have seen are pampered Care Bears compared to the Somali "Moryan"; they go for days without food, running on Qat, cigarettes and methamphetamines. Completely irrational, for example, it's not unusual for a moryan to attack you with a knife so he can take your gun.

<comment><USER2> ADX is not your average American prison.

[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_gawande)

<comment><AUTHOR> Very informative article, especially the international comparisons. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> [Edit: that was a quick downvote; less than 30 seconds. Sorry to spoil it for ya, this could have been another high-brow discussion about scientific advances and what have you, but you can't solve all problems with science :-]

Why not solve this by, you know, asking for the community's help and not be hell bent on hanging a teenager or sending him to life in prison? They would never have been in this legal dilemma to begin with if they didn't insist on keeping this wounded[1] broke ass dimwit, and been cowboys for, and the A-Team of, Justice and the American Way(TM) in Somali waters.

I am a Somali and speak the language; the pirates agreed to release the hostage if they were allowed to go home free. Guess who didn't wanna take this? That's right, them boys with them fancy guns; the new Lockheed scopes had to be tested. Fuckit, who cares if some Vermont dweeb takes a hit? we call it a failed stand off and blame the Somalis. Fortunately, things turned out a little easier and three pirates were killed. Mission accomplished? no. Someone somewhere had to be the hero and hit two birds with one stone; 1) Prove that no act of aggression against American interests goes unpunished, and 2) Show that "even our enemies have rights" and we're a people of law and respect .... WHAT? The fucker is a minor? and he boarded our ship under truce to negotiate with us? Why are you telling me this after we agreed to a press-conference and flown the fucker to JFK?

\-- [1] he was stabbed in the arm and the neck when he went on board for negation. [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article61...](http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article6115871.ece)

<comment><AUTHOR> Piracy is a crime against the law of nations,

<http://cornellsun.com/node/37087>

and there doesn't seem to be any serious doubt that the four men who had guns in the lifeboat of the Maersk Alabama had got into the lifeboat after committing an act of piracy.

<comment><USER3> This is established, but it doesn't help ONE bit in determining the age of the captured pirate.

Here is how to find out his age: hand him over to the provisional unrecognized government of that part of Somalia, it's called Puntland, and let THEM use their local resources, find out who he is and who he went to school with.

If we handed Saddam Hussein to the provisional Iraqi government, and didn't bother bringing him here, then why would we get our hands dirty with the trial of some low-life criminal? I will tell you why, because someone in .gov thought it was a good idea to project the new administration as a transnational law-abiding citizen of the world, yet still capable of delivering ass-whooping solutions where necessary. It goes hand in hand with the Obama administration's image of itself as a Canada with a better military. All the sensitive feel-good B.S. of the /other/ developed nations, plus all the interventionist, gungho mentality of Bush Jr.'s

<comment><AUTHOR> _Here is how to find out his age_

My first reply to you was to the issue of letting him go. The United States authorities who captured the pirate have good legal authority to keep him in their custody. But as to the issue of finding out his age, that is certainly an issue that his defense lawyers will bring up at his trial. That is always brought up if there is any doubt about a defendant's age. Any competent witness who has information about his age is likely to be called at trial, either by the defense or by the prosecution. If the provisional government of Somalia is in good working order, the witnesses will be produced at the trial and testify.

<comment><USER3> "Any competent witness who has information about his age is likely to be called at trial"

And provide an opportunity for the prosecuting government to indulge itself as righteous and morally upright. This is cultural posturing at best, using one hungry man to an advance an agenda and project a world-wide image.

There is no need to drag the issue any further; no American was harmed and no American ship was robbed. He is no Eichmann, hunted down to face justice. And he is no Hannibal, driven to Rome in shackles to face the imperial might he had the audacity to challenge. He is a hungry man with a rusty AK who risked his life in an unseaworthy vessel to take a shot at instant wealth, LA gang style. But my feeling is that the government will ride this pony until it gets what it wants, not just the global image improvement when he is slapped with an easy 10 year sentence, but possibly an American base or an outpost in his part of the world.

<comment><AUTHOR> _no American was harmed_

Are you seriously saying that being confined on a lifeboat with four armed men for days at sea is not any harm at all? In general, threatening people with deadly weapons crosses the line into "violent crime," even if none of the weapons are discharged.

And the ship was carrying RELIEF SUPPLIES for Somalia, which were delayed in delivery to the pirates' compatriots.

<comment><USER3> I hope no one in the state department thinks like you or we would end up with a billion dollar budget to build air-conditioned American military bases in Boosaaso to protect our interests, safe-guard passage of ships and do a little nation building on the side.

If they keep him here that will only invite more "pirates", an easy visa to the U.S. :-P (the guys you're trying to reason with are strung out on methamphetamines; good luck winning _that_ debate.)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>